Fashion week has develop into a platform for brands to launch their latest sustainability efforts, whether it’s cactus leather jackets, a return to handcrafting, or reused materials. But often absent is any mention or consideration of the sustainability of the sweetness. Yes, fashion week is primarily about fashion (the clue’s within the name), but beauty is integral to the finished vision and the brand’s messaging for the season, so why is it being disregarded?

Harris Reed, known for repurposing Oxfam-sourced bridalwear, Collina Strada who uses biomaterials and deadstock fabrics, and Matty Bovan who has elevated upcycling to recent levels, are amongst many ostensibly eco-aligned brands who use Estée Lauder-owned MAC products for his or her beauty looks, the duplicity of which was noted by Jessica DeFino. Other brands of a similarly sustainable bent, akin to Richard Malone, Conner Ives, and Marques’Almeida also use products from beauty giants like MAC, L’Oréal, and Toni and Guy, hardly known for his or her hard-line stances on the people and planet. To not pile all of the blame on the younger crowd, loads of more established brands, from Stella McCartney to Marni, mismatch their fashion values with their beauty too, partnering with “unsustainable” artists or slathering their models in glitter (i.e. microplastics).

“There was this rise in sustainable fashion, but there was no follow through on that messaging [for beauty],” says Khandiz Joni, co-founder of the Conscious Beauty Union (CBU), a platform and community which goals to support artists working in a more sustainable way. Sponsors, Joni points out, could go some strategy to explaining why a designer might send a model down a runway in a carbon-neutral dress and a face filled with petrochemicals, that are pushing oil demand, contributing to climate breakdown, and harming the communities (often low income, and communities of color) wherein they’re produced. It could also explain why palm oil-using brands are still on the menu despite the ingredient’s over-cultivation being a major driver of deforestation which is accelerating climate change. The largest brands who’ve the largest impact often have the largest budgets and it could actually be difficult for a brand, or an independent artist for that matter, to show a chance down.

“We’re not going to alter the system if we are saying yes to each job,” says Joni. “But it surely must be a step change. Speaking from a private standpoint, I do not have a baby, I do not have a mortgage, I used to be in a position to turn away a whole lot of work and I believe that is where this conversation around sustainability as an artist is not being had enough.”

An emerging make-up artist or session stylist won’t have influence or privilege to say no to certain brands or products but those with platforms that give their opinion some weight are starting to. One such artist is Crystabel Riley, who works with brands including Chopova Lowena, Pimples Studios, and Di Petsa. In addition to cleansing with reusable flannels, and using compostable prosthetics, she includes products from Haeckels, UpCircle, Twelve Beauty, and Typology in her kit to create looks which can be directly fresh-faced and otherworldly. “For something to be really luxurious or beautiful it must have a sustainable or conscious focus,” she told Dazed Beauty in June.

Jen Hunter, the top make-up artist at Lush, who has 15 years’ experience as a make-up artist, agrees. “It’s very much about elevating the category,” she says. “We will show what we will achieve with it and impart knowledge together with it as well.”

To do this, Hunter reached out to Eirinn Hayhow to collaborate on her latest collection, Tree People. Hayhow, who’s supported by London Fashion Week and the British Fashion Council, makes her own dyes from food waste and foraged plants and berries, and salvages textiles from charity shops. This season she also made vegan leather from coffee grounds. “For me it’s imperative that each element of my collection and presentation of labor is sustainable,” says Hayhow. “When Lush contacted me, I used to be super excited to collaborate with a team of folks that are also super sustainable.”

The landscape is shifting but Fashion Week is a giant machine, and it should take some time for it to catch up

Hunter used Lush’s color cosmetics so as to add a flush to the cheeks and create “weathered, worn-in, lived-in make-up” to reflect the nature-based roots of Hayhow’s collection. While she acknowledges using natural products can require a unique approach, Hunter says it’s concerning the artist’s “internal creativity” and the way they will adapt. 

Internal creativity is not any problem for Athena Paginton, who uses color like no other. Her full face, color clash looks offer no hint at the entire compromise some might expect when switching to sustainable, cruelty-free products as Paginton uses. They’re all impactive, winning her clients including Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Loewe, and Burberry.

The emergence of sustainable make-up artists like Riley and Paginton, in addition to Lou Dartford, Katey Denno, Laura Onea, Sjaniël Turrell, Bryanna Angel, and Tahira (one other CBU co-founder), means there’s a recent era of practitioners on the market who can educate the designers they work with concerning the importance of responsible beauty. Phoebe English, for example, highlighted the zero waste nature of the sweetness featured within the shoot for her CRINKLE collection.

That brands like Weleda, Sunday Riley, and Tata Harper at the moment are sponsoring various fashion weeks can be a step forward, expanding the roster beyond the same old suspects. Nonetheless, the brands and products make-up artists use, whom designers then tacitly endorse, isn’t the start and end of the conversation about sustainable beauty at fashion week. “If a designer is wanting a certain look and a natural or eco product won’t give you the chance to deliver that, how will you take a zero-waste approach?” says Joni. “Or can we are saying that, OK, the red lip isn’t uniform, but we commit to only using whatever reds are in our artists’ kits?” Because as much as an artist can use natural or organic beauty, a continuing churn of freebies from sponsors that are never finished has its own different impact.

The landscape is shifting but fashion week is a giant machine, and Hunter believes it should take some time for it to catch up. “It definitely was a slow process for me. I had my ways of doing things. I at all times knew I had my disposables; I had my cotton pads and my wipes. It was this manner of working that you simply get used to, but I’ve modified a whole lot of my work practices as a contract makeup artist and I do know there’s a whole lot of folks that have gotten a commitment to alter the way in which they do things as well.”

Organisations just like the CBU and the Sustainable Beauty Coalition, which was founded after the discharge of the British Beauty Council’s 2020 Courage to Change sustainability report, might help in making a more unified approach to higher beauty. But it surely can be helpful for fashion councils to step in too, considering more fastidiously about their sponsors and providing guidance for designers. (We reached out to the British Fashion Council but haven’t received a response on the time of writing). “We’re reliant on the system, and the Fashion Week system needs to alter with the intention to get more sustainable beauty practice,” says Joni. 

She suggests make-up artists and designers investigate the brands they’re working with, from how they source their ingredients to how much waste they produce. It should help nevertheless it’s a stop gap on the strategy to the system change that’s really needed.